Moreno v. Visser Ranch, Inc.

Plaintiff was injured while a passenger in a pickup truck involved in a single-vehicle, rollover accident.  Plaintiff sued the driver (his father), the corporation that employed the driver, and an affiliated corporation that owned the vehicle.  Plaintiff alleged the driver was acting in the scope of his employment at the time of the accident and claimed the defendant corporations were vicariously liable under California’s doctrine of respondeat superior.  The defendant corporations obtained summary adjudication of the respondeat superior claim on the ground that the driver, who was returning home late in the evening after attending a family gathering, was not acting in the scope of his employment at the time of the accident. 

Scope of employment is a question of fact.  Here, the evidence shows defendants required the driver to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond immediately to cell phone calls for repairs and maintenance needed at the ranches, farms and dairies operated by defendants.  Also, there is conflicting evidence about whether the driver was required to use the company-owned vehicle, which contained tools and spare parts, at all times so he could respond quickly to call for repairs at defendants’ various locations.  Based on this evidence and other details about the driver’s job, a reasonable trier of fact could find the driver was acting within the scope of his employment when the accident occurred.

We publish this decision because it is distinguishable from most other cases involving an employee’s required use of a company-owned vehicle.  Usually, those cases involve an employee who is required to use the vehicle only for the commute to and from work but is not required to use the vehicle while off work.  Here, a trier of fact reasonably could find the driver’s use of the truck for personal travel after work was dictated by the employer’s requirement.  In such circumstances, the risk of the truck’s involvement in an accident is a foreseeable risk that is attributable to the business enterprise under California’s risks-of-the-enterprise principle, which is the primary justification for its respondeat superior doctrine. 

Consequently, responsibility for that risk is best allocated to the enterprise, which is able to spread the risk (and actually did so) by obtaining insurance.

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